


Seeking An Open Window

by Toomanynorns



Category: Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-19
Updated: 2013-09-28
Packaged: 2017-12-27 01:40:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/972804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toomanynorns/pseuds/Toomanynorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dink Meeker thought leaving Earth would be a good idea. His great-aunt Demi would have agreed with him in the strongest terms. Unfortunately, that only occurred to him when his feet had already touched Helvetica's surface and there was no way back worth talking about.</p><p>A 'Whatever Happened To...' story about Dink Meeker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue - Arrival

Helvetica was a dark planet. From his shuttle down to the planet's surface, Dink could spot only a handful of lights, cast far apart. He shook his head. He'd gotten too used to his homes in Western Europe, where the lights had long since spidered up along every coast and city until it swallowed up everything. Helvetica was a new colony. It made sense that it would be dark.

He squashed down on the wrongness he felt. He'd chosen this. He'd known the consequences. And this-- this was just the fear that freedom gave you. It would pass.

But it stayed with him as he got off his shuttle and greeted the few people who had bothered to stay up to watch the fourth batch of colonists come in. He'd insisted on not being the first to come out, just to avoid creating the wrong impression. The reward he got for that humility was a lack of attention.

Fine with him. Attention hadn't done him any good in his previous life.

There was a woman waiting for him, a perfunctory smile on her face and exhaustion in her eyes. She obviously hadn't slept much, so he offered her a real smile in return - it was the least he could do.

"Dink Meeker?" she asked. Her expression didn't even budge.

Dink dropped the smile. "That's me," he agreed. "You must be Mathilde." He stuck out a hand.

Her mouth did quirk for an instant - no doubt at his off pronunciation of her name. He'd take that reaction-- if he'd been more awake he might have even tried to flirt with her. Instead he just shook her hand as she took his.

"This way," she said. Now he noticed her accent. German, but not quite. This was a Swiss colony after all. "It's just a short walk."

"Guess I should get used to walking," he said, lifting his duffle bag. "How large is the city?"

"It is three miles across," Mathilde said. "We had five hundred people before you came. We'll have more. The city will get bigger." She cast Dink a look. "Don't get used to anything."

He held up a hand in supplication, palm-first. "I wasn't planning to," he said. "I'm terrible at getting used to anything." His expression tried to invite a smile from her, but she didn't respond.

All right.

The rest of their trip was silent. She didn't respond to his few attempts at jokes, so eventually he gave up. Hopefully the rest of Helvetica would be more inclined towards socializing, or this would get old pretty fast. 

Quiet, alone and isolated - maybe Dink had been wrong to pick Cincinnatus as his measuring stick. It didn't feel like his thing. In fact, the little creature gnawing away at his insides had just grown three sizes and seemed to be digging its angry claws into his throat.

He tried to find something to distract himself. The area they were walking through now was full of homes, though they stood far apart, more like American architecture than the shapes he knew from the towns of his youth. Each had its own plot of land, some covered in flowers that he couldn't identify in the darkness, some holding what looked like livestock. There were domesticable animals here, he'd read about that. Maybe enough generations had gone by to domesticate them.

After the fourth house, something struck him. All the curtains had been closed. Light from inside poured through, just enough to chase away the pitch black outside, but he could see nothing going on in there.

He felt a pang in his heart.

His great-aunt Demi would have called Helvetica _ongezellig_ , he thought. He could hear her saying it in his mind, with vague disdain in her voice. Why were all the curtains closed? Did they have something to hide? True families gathered together in their living rooms and didn't mind sitting in front of an open curtain. Not only did it prove you had nothing to hide, but it brought warmth to the neighborhood, inviting all to share in your cosy familiarity-- in your _gezelligheid_.

Dink had never listened to great-aunt Demi much when he was young. She was old and old-fashioned. But now her words echoed in the hole that had appeared in his stomach, and he couldn't stop repeating them to himself in his mind. Each house, the same: large, well-lit, all the curtains closed.

And not a word from Mathilde.

"Are we there yet?" he asked desperately.

"We are," she said.

He looked up at the house they had stopped at. It was much smaller than the others. There was only one story, and the garden surrounding it had no sense of orderliness to it at all. It wasn't even that big.

"Thank god," he sighed.

She shot him a funny look.

He smiled at her. "I'm tired," he said. "That's all. Keys?"

"No keys," Mathilde replied. She turned. "I'll see you in the morning."

"Yeah," Dink replied. He didn't really feel up to arguing with her. In fact, he didn't feel like much at all: he opened the door and went inside, opened the curtains in his living room, then stumbled upstairs and collapsed on the bed.

Life always seemed easier when the sun shone and you'd slept. He doubted it would be different now.


	2. Sleep Deprivation

It should have been a relief, to sleep properly after two years of stasis pods and rough shipboard bunks. But the air was just two degrees too hot, the mattress just a little bit too soft, and Dink's mind just a few thousand neurons a second too fast. He laid there in perfect darkness for hours, his eyes shut. Exhaustion fell on him like a prickly blanket. Second by second the strength drained from his limbs until they felt like twigs swaddled in paper towels.

There was also the panic, which spiked up in his gut at least once every hour. What had he done? Why had he agreed to this? His mother was dead, his brother was an old man. And what had he received in return? A small house, no friends, no support system.

The twigs jutting out of his shoulders shivered. Then his stomach joined in. The shiver took control of his entire body like a wave, shaking every part of him.

Dink tossed the blanket aside and slid out of bed. There wouldn't be any sleep for him tonight - he'd just have to wear himself out until his body's alarms kicked in and forced him to get some. 

So he padded barefoot into his kitchen, opening up cabinets (empty) and containers (empty) and the fridge (some cookies and something that looked like bread). It occurred to him that he was looking for something. A few slow seconds later, it even dawned on him: coffee. If he was going to be awake, then he was entitled to his coffee. Whoever had stocked his house obviously hadn't realized that would be his number one priority.

He slammed a drawer shut. Nothing in there. Not in the next one either. The third one made a noise he was pretty sure it wasn't supposed to make as it came loose from its hinges and hit the floor centimeters away from his feet.

"Shit!"

He pulled his hands away from the counter. Crap. Why had this kitchen been so shoddily made--?

The muscles in his left arm gave off an angry flare of pain. Not shoddily made. He'd just used more force than he'd really been aware of. So much for paper-towel twig arms, huh, Meeker? You're still a big dumb jock, even when your brain is perforated. "No coffee," he muttered to himself, then squatted down to pick up the drawer.  
Maybe whoever had stocked his house didn't have any access to coffee. Maybe there weren't any beans out here, in space. Had they brought any with them? Dink wasn't sure. He'd refused to check the manifest because he wasn't in charge.

Stupid. Now he was stuck on a planet with no coffee.

He shoved the drawer back into place, then rubbed his face with both hands, trying to chase away the flimsy film of exhaustion that had settled behind his eyes. It didn't work. "Right," he muttered.

The rest of the house yielded him no solace either. Eventually it began to feel claustrophobic. The walls weren't right and the windows weren't right and his view certainly wasn't right either. He felt like he was stuck in a horror movie in slow motion, lost on some roadtrip somewhere. Stuck in an unfamiliar little house in an unfamiliar little country, waiting for the guy with the big scary knife to show up.

Outside was better. Outside, he could at least breathe, thick huffs of oxygen-rich air. 

He stood there in the yard for a long time. He didn't look at the ground, where strange, alien plants laid stretched out by his feet. He didn't look up at the sky either, where twin moons slid from one side of the firmament to the other. His eyes were on the horizon, which slid from black to pink to a tenuous, whispy blue shade. 

"You know, Church services won't start for another two hours."

Dink looked up. He smiled wryly. "I'm not religious."

The scathing expression on Mathilde's face softened. At least, he thought so. It could have been a trick of the light. "You're not on Earth," she said. "You're not going to get in trouble for going to church."

"I know," Dink said. "I'm still not religious."

The softness in her expression faded as if it had never been there. "Then what are you doing out here?" she said. "It's early."

Dink latched onto the out gladly - there had been a rant forming on the back of his tongue about how his Earth hadn't been that intolerant; a rant he wasn't sure he was actually qualified to give. He swallowed it back and let out a chuckle instead. "Just can't sleep," he said ruefully. "It happens."

Mathilde shook her head. "Must be the stasis," she said. "It doesn't sound pleasant."

"It's fine," he said, rubbing idly at his left arm. "It's a lot like sleeping for a day and then waking up completely useless. Except the day is two years and the 'completely useless' apparently lasts longer than a couple of hours."

"Or maybe you were always useless," she said, "and you just didn't realize it until now."

He let out another chuckle. "It's possible," he said. "So what brings you back to my yard?"

She handed him a flyer. "The introduction meeting will be in three hours," she said. "I was going to put this in your mailbox, but..."

"...I'm a weird insomniac zombie who likes to loiter at night," Dink filled in. He glanced down at the flyer. "Thanks. I'll be there."

Mathilde nodded and flashed him a brief smile. He was pretty sure it was the first one he'd seen on her face. Idly, he noted that it wasn't unattractive. "Then I'll see you there," she said, and turned around, walking out of his garden with surprising quickness.

"Okay," Dink said. He got a whiff of something terrible and wrinkled his nose. "Okay. Shower."

\---

By the time Dink reached the town square, he'd made an embarrassing number of wrong turns. Not only that, but the place was already filled to the brink with people. There was no way he'd be able to come in close to see the governor, new or old. Which was fine with him: he'd decided well before he left that there was no point in caring. He was here to rest, not get involved in local politics.

"Thank you for making it here this morning," the old governor - Irri, that was her name - said. She was smiling, Dink could tell that from here, but not much else. But it was obvious her English was rusty. Most of the survivors of the Formic War who had settled here had been Polish, German, Austrian, Swiss. They had their own shared language, and Dink, with his background, had no trouble at all hearing it through her mangled English. "I'd like to welcome all new arrivals to our beautiful planet. Hopefully you have all been made at home."

"Governor Priesch is here as my replacement," she continued. "But we both wish to guarantee a similar continuity of power. So over the next few weeks--"

"I'll be visiting all of your current projects." Dink knew the man next to her: he'd met him once before, when they'd all entered the ship. Standing next to this vibrant older woman, he looked exhausted, too young, and intolerably pale. He'd tried to compensate somewhat through his choice in uniform, that was obvious. Even from this distance it looked pristine, decorated, adult. Something about it didn't seem to fit properly, though: it looked too restrictive and too loose at the same time. Dink winced, partly because of his appearance, partly because of the way Priesch had just shoved Irri aside to make his point. This would not be pretty. 

"I'll converse with your project leaders and we will make adjustments were necessary. I know you've all gotten used to former Governor Irri's kind rule. I respect her work. However, we have to change to adjust to the new situation. Some of that is because of the numbers. There are twice as many colonists now as there are natives, and while the homes you have built are acceptable, I think we can all agree we should work towards a better standard."

"The greater issue, however, is one of culture. You have lived here for a long time and you have gotten used to things workign a certain way," Priesch continued. "But we are here with many new cultures now. We can no longer dictate policy based on a situation that is wildly different from the one we will be living in from now on."

Dink squinted at him. Surely he didn't think this was new information to anyone? It sounded more like he was trying to make excuses for something beforehand.  
It did not really put him at ease at all. Especially not when it was being done this clumsily.

"As of today, we will meet here once every month," Priesch continued, "As my people draft a new rule set to keep the peace while everyone settles in. While we're in this transitory period, alcohol usage will be prohibited to decrease the chance of any tensions throwing a wrench into things."

He smiled at Irri. The smile he caught in return seemed to be a little confused. "I thank you for all your hard work, ma'am," he said. "You've done the International Fleet and humanity a great service. Now is your time to rest." He cleared his throat. "As for the rest of you, you'll find your duty schedules posted to your homes at 2000 tonight. To my fellow colonists: enjoy your first day on Helvetica. To the natives: thank you for letting us into your home."

He stepped back, practically bustling Irri off the stage. Dink felt a prickle of annoyance: not only had this meeting been incredibly scattershot, but some of the things Priesch was saying didn't make any particular sense. He also didn't get the feeling this had been exactly what the two old governors had decided upon, though it was perfectly legal for Priesch to do so.

It was weird.

Dink tried to picture Ender up there, doing the same - making hard calls that would inevitably make people's lives better. But he couldn't, this state of affairs felt off, and Governor Priesch was no Ender. He shook his head. That wasn't the point. He shouldn't be thinking about Ender; he shouldn't be thinking about Priesch's leadership style at all.  
His job, for the forseeable future, was to get settled in his home, find a job, maybe a girlfriend. He was supposed to help people build up their colony and hang out with them after everyone's long workdays and maybe have a laugh. The normal life.

Remember that.

"Dink." 

He turned to find his face full of angry Mathilde.

"Did you know he was going to do that?" she asked, without awaiting any signal from his end. "Disrespectful!"

He shrugged his shoulders. "They didn't exactly consult me," he pointed out. "I'm not the governor around here for a reason."

"These are your people," she pointed out. "Let me remind you you are guests here! No one said it was okay for you to do this!"

Dink held up his hands as he tried to placate her with his words. "Look, officially, he's in the right," he said. "He's governor now, she isn't. That doesn't mean what he's doing is right, but it does make the situation a little complicated. Besides-- maybe this is just a bad PR moment. He's practically a kid."

"Stop making excuses," she said, but he could see she was cooling off somewhat. "Fine. I'll give your man more time to get over his 'bad PR moment'."

He glanced past her at some of the other faces of people passing him by as they left the square. He realized that he could separate colonists from locals at a glance: the former looked slightly chagrined, the latter looked furious. Great. Their great and glorious leader had only spoken a few words, and already he was setting them up for a culture clash. He sighed.

Not his problem. _Not_ his problem.

"Don't mind Matti, she just likes being angry." A blonde boy-- no, a man, if Dink wanted to be seen as a man here, then so was this guy-- ducked into view behind her. "And the new governor is an idiot, but we already suspected that going in."

Mathilde pinched the bridge of her nose. "Meeker, meet Rolf," she said. "He's an idiot. And knows as well as I do that opening speeches matter."

"Only if you don't already expect the worse," Rolf replied, patting her on the shoulder. "Hey, Dink. How about we grab some sausages and put all of this stupid political nonsense behind us, no? Matti can come if she remembers how to do anything but frown a lot."

Dink blinked.

"I'll take that as a yes," Rolf said, grinning. "Good, good. It's been forever since we had new meat - literally." He snagged Dink by the arm and practically dragged him out of the plaza. Dink let it happen. Sleep hadn't worked to clear his mind of his odd emotional state. Maybe food and a chance to make friends would help him on his way.


End file.
